Employees Don’t Get Day Off because Their Pet Dies

My boss wouldn’t even let me take a paid day off when my cat died. This was one of the incidents cited by a client rep in her psychological harassment case against the medical clinic that fired her 4 months into her tenure. While perhaps lacking in compassion, the boss’s conduct wasn’t “vexatious” or harassing the labour tribunal found. Nothing in the Labour Standards Act says an employee can take a day off from work because of a pet’s death [Dumais et 124670 Canada Ltd., 2018 QCTAT 3574 (CanLII), July 23, 2018].